› added 4 years ago

304

TIL, Abraham Lincoln regularly hid important documents and letters under his hat.

Read more lincolncottage.org

via reddit.com

NXBge TIL from house cats to elephants, most large mammals take about 21 seconds to pee.
0wwVy TIL that 12,000 bears are farmed for their bile in Asia which is used in traditional Chinese medicine and generates $2bn per year. Farming always involves surgery on the bears to insert a catheter or to cut a hole through the abdomen by which the bile leaks. Bear bile has no medicinal effect.
JYQmv TIL people with Seasonal Affective Disorder experience more prolonged secretion of night time melatonin in the winter than those without, mimicking the urge to sleep more shown in hibernating animals.
7rBXr TIL the Catholic Church’s legal system, called canon law, was the first modern Western legal system, and is still the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West.
awXv0 TIL the radiation levels in the US Capital Building are 55 times higher than the permissible levels of radiation exposure allowed by the EPA at the outer-most perimeters of nuclear power plants. Essentially, if the Capitol building were a nuclear facility, it would fail a safety examination.